


The Case of the Silver Watch

by mistyzeo



Category: Sherlock Holmes - Arthur Conan Doyle
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Established Relationship, Frottage, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, M/M, Making Up, Miscommunication, Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-16
Updated: 2016-02-16
Packaged: 2018-05-20 20:43:53
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,744
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6024055
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mistyzeo/pseuds/mistyzeo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>1899: <i>Holmes had been nearly two months without a case when I found what I believed to be evidence of his descent back into the bad habits of his youth.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	The Case of the Silver Watch

**Author's Note:**

> A commission for an individual who prefers to remain anonymous!
> 
> Many thanks to Jaradel for beta reading and general life advice.

Holmes had been nearly two months without a case when I found what I believed to be evidence of his descent back into the bad habits of his youth. I was wrist-deep in his second-best overcoat— I'd been looking for my cigarette case, which he'd borrowed and neglected to return— when my fingers brushed something that made my heart plummet. I hadn't seen the morocco case since 1890, before he'd disappeared, but I knew the texture of it at once. The feeling of the worn leather turned my stomach, and I almost couldn't bare to pull it out to confirm.

It wasn't the very same case I knew, but it was sickeningly familiar. I turned it over in my hands. It felt too light, which meant that the needle and syringe were not inside. I wondered where they were. In his dresser, hidden under his socks? Tucked in a drawer in his desk?

Then I heard his footsteps on the stair, and he called, "Watson!" loud enough to ring out through the house. I dropped the case back into his pocket and hurried to straighten the coats on the rack. 

"What is it?" I snapped.

"Are you coming?" he demanded. He was downstairs in the foyer, waiting for me. We were going to the symphony. "We're going to be late!"

"Yes, yes," I said, abandoning my search. I hurried down the stairs, buttoning up my coat. It was March of 1899, nearly five years after he'd come back from the dead. I'd thought perhaps I was ready to celebrate the anniversary of his return. Now I wasn't sure a celebration was in order.

He bundled me into the cab and slid in beside me, banging the doors shut. "The Royal Albert Hall!" he cried to the driver as we jolted into motion. "What were you doing?" he asked, once we were settled.

"Looking for my cigarettes," I said dully.

"Oh, sorry, they're here," said he, and shifted his weight. He leaned heavily into my shoulder. Then he righted himself and handed my silver case over. It was the one with his name on it, the battered old one he'd left for me at the falls of the Reichenbach. I'd had it polished and repaired, but had never actually returned it to him. He didn't seem inclined to take it back.

"Thank you." I took the case with numb fingers and slipped it away into my own front pocket.

Holmes looked at me, frowning. I wasn't doing anything to hide my altered mood. He opened his mouth, no doubt to inquire into what had changed, but thought better of it at the last moment and looked away. Instead, his hand crept onto my knee and gave it a squeeze. I didn't pull away, but nor did I part my thighs to allow his hand to slide up the way it usually did. He kept his hand still, sensing my reticence. A moment later, he removed it. His confusion fairly radiated from the other side of the cab. I kept my chin tucked into my muffler. I couldn't face him, just yet. I couldn't look into his eyes and see them dilated, further evidence of his use.

We rode in silence, and I could feel the tension growing in his body. He was becoming agitated. It made me ill. When we got out and he had paid the driver, I hurried up the stairs to the hall ahead of him. He came after me, and caught my elbow just before I reached the door.

"Watson," he said sharply, turning me toward him. I looked away from his face. More softly, he whispered, "John. Are you all right?"

"I'm fine," I said. "Are you?"

He blinked. "Yes," he said. "Are you sure?"

"Fine," I said again. "We're going to be late."

He huffed a sigh through his nose and let me go. I had to let him go ahead of me, for the tickets were in his name. We left our coats in the cloakroom and picked our way to our seats as the lights went down. The cigarette case was still in my breast pocket, and its warm weight pressed upon my heart.

 

"You're agitated," Holmes said, the moment we were back inside Baker Street. The symphony had been splendid, I assume, but I'd hardly absorbed any of it.

"I'm  _ fine _ ," I said, shucking my coat and hanging it up. "I'm… tired. That's all."

He narrowed his eyes at me, assessing. He knew I was lying. Nevertheless, he dropped the matter. Instead, he went to his desk and began to fiddle with one of his half-finished experiments. I wanted to stay and observe him, torture myself trying to see any evidence of his use, but now that I'd claimed exhaustion I felt I'd better follow through and go to bed. Still, I lingered: smoked a pipe, stared out the window, and kept an eye on him. He didn't seem out of sorts, though I could tell he knew I was watching him. He worked carefully with his pipette, moving solutions from one beaker to the other, and occasionally taking notes. There was nothing to observe about him. He looked the same as he always looked: intensely focused on the matter at hand.

I retreated, and bid him goodnight. He glanced up from the experiment for a moment, nodded to me, and looked down again. It wasn't any less of an acknowledgement than I got many nights. Sometimes he scarcely noticed I was gone.

My bedroom was cold in contrast to the sitting room, despite the banked fire, and I changed quickly into my nightshirt. As I folded and put away my shirt, I felt the box I had secreted away in the drawer with a stab of guilt. I was hiding my own bad habits. I pulled it out and fingered the hinges, then opened it to look upon my folly.

The plain gold ring inside was, ostensibly, sized for a woman, but I had measured Holmes's littlest finger without him knowing. At least I hoped I'd done it so. I'd curled my own finger around his one night and estimated where my nail scored my knuckle. The girl at the jewellery counter had been impressed at my subterfuge. I'd made sure Holmes was out before even entering the house with the box in my pocket; he'd have spotted it at once. I'd been working up the courage to present it to him for months now.

I put the box back with a lump in my throat and closed the dresser. It would have to wait a little longer. Perhaps indefinitely. What a fool I was.

The sheets on my bed were frigid. Holmes always ran hot: he was the one I could count on to warm them up. I curled up underneath the quilts and willed myself to stop shivering. The light from the sitting room was barely visible around the edge of my door. I had no right to be disappointed that he hadn't followed me immediately: firstly, even sober his experiments often carried him through the night, and I was well used to coming down in the morning to a discovery or a minor breakthrough; secondly, I'd been anything but inviting, and despite the impression I'd given of him in my accounts, Sherlock Holmes does know how to take a hint; thirdly, if it were a stimulant he was taking, there would be no reason at all for him to even consider sleep.

So it was with some surprise that I was roused from my dozing sulk by his weight upon the mattress and the rush of cold air that preceded him under the covers.

"Holmes?" I mumbled. The sliver of light from downstairs was gone.

"My room is too chilly," he whispered, his knees bumping into mine.  That was almost certainly a lie. I turned onto my back, giving him space, and he draped himself along my side, his cheek on my shoulder, his arm across my middle. I tucked my arm under his head and lay the other hand on his ribs. His breath was warm and humid against my throat. I carded my fingers through his hair. We lay for a long time in silence, until pretending to sleep slowly and inevitably became reality.

 

In the morning, I left Holmes still abed to visit several of the very few patients I still had. They kept me on for my manner and the novelty of it all, not for my reliable availability or my particularly superior advice. Still, it was good to get out of the house. I needed distance from Holmes to figure out what to do. How could I help him overcome this— again— if he wouldn't confide in me? I couldn't force my assistance on him. He'd recoil and refuse. But nor could I just let him drift away. I was going to have to say something. Hint somehow that I knew. Give the impression that I was ready to talk if he wished to consult me.

Mrs Simmons, a woman whose four children I had delivered and now treated for any variety of childhood maladies, noticed my inattention. Her gently, motherly inquiry into my well-being nearly made me crack.

"I'm only… worried about a friend," I said.

"Is it Mr Holmes?" Mrs Simmons asked.

If I had many other friends to worry about, my patients certainly wouldn't know them.

"Has he been working too hard?"

"I fear he has not been working enough," I replied.

She nodded sagely. I had written of his black moods, I realised, and she might know exactly why I worried, though she might not know the extent of it. "Well, I shall keep an ear out for a mystery for him," she said, "but, Doctor, he has you to look after him." She smiled and patted my hand. "If you take care of him as well as you do my little ones, he's bound to be better off than you imagine."

I shrugged and thanked her, but I wasn't so sure of that. The children were obligated to accept my medical attention: Holmes was not. He treated my profession casually, as if it were my hobby. He'd let me bandage him up after a scuffle, or accept my prescription of chicken soup for a cold, but my opinion on his drug use had never been welcome.

I'd left him over it before. We had both been young and stubborn and believed we were in the right. He insisted the cocaine helped his brain, and I maintained that it was killing him. I couldn't watch him destroy himself then, and I wouldn’t do it now. But neither could I leave him again. I had no wife to run off with; Holmes was everything. And even in those days he had been, though I'd been too headstrong to really know it.

 

We undressed for bed together that night, and I found myself sneaking looks at him, though I was within my rights to look my fill.  His forearms were smooth, blemished only by old scars. I was ashamed at my subterfuge, and at the same time I worried he might be putting the needle in somewhere else. In at his thighs, or between his toes. I couldn't inspect him all over without drawing his attention. When we got into bed, it was clear that I was not hiding my distress well, for Holmes leant up on his elbow and stared at me for a long time. Finally he said, "What is the matter?"

"I'm thinking about a patient," I said.

He raised an eyebrow, disbelieving, though it was superficially true. "You never stand on ceremony with me, John," he said.

"Leave it," I replied, turning away.

He tucked himself up along my back. "You worry me," he said, his lips against the nape of my neck.

I squeezed my eyes shut, unable to answer.

 

For two days I fretted in silence, searching for evidence and finding none, doubting myself, doubting him. Surely if he were back to his old bad habits, I would have caught him at it by now. We were in each other’s pockets, hardly apart for more than a few hours. But those hours were crucial. I didn’t need to remind him of my opinions on the cocaine. He might very well be hiding it from me. But if that were so, would he be so careless as to leave the morocco case where it might be found?

The black mood never descended upon him, though it had me fully in its grasp. I knew he was suspicious. He watched me as closely as I watched him, and we went in ever-narrowing circles, trying to read one another. I knew it wouldn’t last. I had never been any good at keeping things from him.

 

It was less than a week after my initial discovery that things finally came to a head. The anniversary of Holmes’s return was upon us. I had reserved a table at Mancini’s weeks before, but had so far neglected to tell Holmes about it. When I came back from my rounds after lunch, he was waiting for me. The sitting room was full of tobacco smoke, the windows closed against the warm spring afternoon. The decanter was half-empty on the sideboard.

"I found the ring," he said from his slouch on the settee, when I had taken off my hat and coat. "When were you planning on telling me?"

My heart skipped a beat. "I was waiting for the right time," I said.

"And when would that be, exactly?" he demanded. "On your way out the door?" 

“What?”

“You’d never have the heart to warn me,” said he. “You’d never let me stew where you could still see me.” He waved a hand through the cloud that surrounded him, and affected a voice that was supposed to sound like mine, but of course did nothing of the sort. "'Oh, by the way, Holmes, I'm getting married tomorrow, her name is Julia, I guess you're on your own for the rent, old boy!'"

I gaped at him. "I— what? Getting  _ married _ ? Why would I be getting  _ married _ ?"

"It wouldn’t be the first time," he said, lunging from his seat and stalking toward me. His teeth were bared, his jaw tight with fury, but I could see the fear behind his eyes. He thought I was going to leave him. I clenched my fists. 

"That was  _ one time _ ," I said, "and it was— you were alternating so quickly between cocaine and morphine, I thought you hardly noticed."

Holmes scoffed. "Oh, I noticed. Hard to miss a huge, gaping hole in my life when you've gone off to play house with—"

"You say a word against Mary, Holmes, and I swear I'll leave this room."

"Well, you will anyway, won't you? Isn't that the plan?"

"No, you great idiot! I'm not getting married! Not— not to anyone called  _ Julia _ , not to a woman, not to anyone."

Holmes brandished the little box at me. "Then  _ explain _ this, Doctor!" He was shaking, on a knife's edge between anger and despair.

"It's for you, for God's sake," I cried. "It's for you."

He stared at me, the fight draining out of him with the blood out of his face. His voice was a whisper. "What?"

"I bought it for you. I'm not getting married. Not to anyone… else. And I wanted you to know it."

Holmes looked down at his hands. "Bloody hell," he muttered.

"You searched my room in order to find that," I said. "Why?"

"Trying to discover an explanation," he said. "You've— been so strange. Upset. You won't talk to me. I wanted to know why. I suppose I found it, but I just— I read it wrong. I apologise."

I sighed heavily and stepped close to him, closing my hands around his. "It is I who should apologise."

"Whatever for?"

"I— I've read you wrong as well. I hope I have."

Something occurred to him and his expression changed. He drew back, pulling free of my grip, and folded the little box primly between his palms. "Why? What have I— what do you  _ think _ I've done?"

I pursed my lips against the admission that wanted to come tumbling out. I made myself consider the words, choose them carefully, and finally, while the intensity of his glare increased, I said, "I was afraid you'd been taking your seven-per-cent solution again."

He blinked. "You  _ what _ ?"

"I was afraid—"

"No, I heard you," he snapped. "I should have said, what on  _ earth _ made you think that? You know I gave that up. I gave that up  _ years _ ago. I haven't had a single dose since—" He cut himself off suddenly. "You weren't there," he said, on an exhale. He closed his eyes for a moment and then opened them again. "I gave it up while I was… abroad."

I swallowed hard. The mere mention of that period of deception made my throat stick. He gazed down at me, and I had to look away. The sun was setting, and the sky beyond the sitting room windows was flushed pink.

His voice was low. "I took my last dose of the seven-per-cent solution— of any solution, Watson, morphine or cocaine— in Budapest, six months after I left you in Switzerland. It was the only thing keeping me going for a while, but… then it hindered me more than it helped me. I had quite a lot of work to do and I couldn't be distracted. That's all it ever was, you know. Just a distraction."

"A distraction that would  _ kill _ you," I protested. "You never would take my advice about it. I'm not surprised your stance hasn't changed."

"As a matter of  _ fact _ ," Holmes said, "I did take your advice. It  _ would _ have killed me, if I hadn't stopped and focused instead on taking apart Moriarty's empire. I lived every day with your disapproval, and even when I didn't think I'd ever see you again, I thought, ‘at least Watson won't have to worry about that any more.’ I doubt Mary ever gave you cause to fret so."

"Mary!” I was no longer in the mood to apologise. “No, Mary never took drugs to stimulate her mind; no, instead, she contracted an incurable disease and wasted away while I watched, unable to help.  _ Me _ . A physician has never felt more impotent than when he has lost his first love to a history professor and a waterfall and the second to a cancer that eats her from the inside." I was shaking all over. My heart felt like it might beat right out of my chest. Holmes had been gone in an instant, but Mary had lingered for months.  _ Make her comfortable _ , the other doctors had advised.

“It was astronomy,” Holmes said.

I was upstairs before I had even realised I was going, and I had my valise out and on the bed. I began snatching shirts from my closet.

"Watson, stop." He was in the doorway. He was taking the shirts out of the valise again.

"I warned you," I said, "not to bring her into this."

"You said you'd leave the  _ room _ ," he said, "not— not  _ this. _ John, please, not this!"

“Promise me you’re not using again.”

“I’m not! Dear God, I swear it. I can’t believe you’d—”

“What’s in the case, then?”

“What case?”

“The one in your overcoat pocket.”

He was silent, his brow furrowed in confusion. Then his expression cleared. He turned and left my bedroom, still holding my shirts. I sank down onto the bed and put my face in my hands. How had I gone so wrong?

Holmes returned with the morocco case and handed it to me. I turned it over, hesitating, so he snatched it back, muttering, “Oh, for God’s sake.” When he gave it over again, it was open.

Inside was a brilliant silver watch, its glass face polished and its chain coiled carefully in the lush blue velvet. It was wound and ticking softly.

“It’s for you,” Holmes said. “Open it.”

I obeyed, lifting it out of the velvet and touching the spring. The back opened to reveal its whirring gears under another slip of glass, and inside the silver case were stamped two numbers. They were simple and almost looked like pawn broker’s marks, but I realised they were dates, one above the other: _ 1881, 1894. _

“The year I met you,” said Holmes, “and the year you took me back.”

I choked, and Holmes at once threw aside my shirts and took me in his arms, cradling my head against his shoulder. I held the watch to my chest and shuddered. What a fool I was.

“No,” Holmes murmured, and I realised I’d said that aloud. “No, no more than I. I should have never doubted you. In truth, I never have, and so the idea that I might have miscalculated struck me so profoundly.”

“I should have asked you what it was,” I said, muffled in his shirt.

“I would have denied its importance,” Holmes admitted, “not realising what you had assumed.”

“At least we would have had it out right then. I ought never to have—”

He nudged me back so that he could look into my face. He was smiling. “No, you never ought,” he agreed. “Not until you have all the data.”

I almost scoffed at his old adage, but he was quite right. He passed a hand over my hair and kissed my forehead.

“Do you have that blasted ring?” I asked. My voice was hoarse.

He produced it, and I took the box. I opened it, turning it toward him.

“Will you do me the honour of forgiving an old, suspicious bungler and accept this, and wear it so that everyone might see it, and so that I may promise and know that I will always be at your side?”

Holmes lifted the ring out and inspected it in the sunlight. Then, having judged its size, he slid it onto the littlest finger of his left hand. It fit perfectly. He raised an eyebrow at it, and then at me, and closed his hand into a fist. The ring gleamed.

“It suits you,” I said quietly.

“You were nearly out the door,” he said, indicating my valise.

“I wouldn’t have been gone long.”

He looked at me steadily, and I did my best not to squirm under the scrutiny. Though the ring was already on his finger, I had horrible visions of it coming back into my possession.

“No,” he said finally, “I know that. I doubt I’d have let you.”

We stared at one another.

“Will you wear that watch?” he asked. “So that— how did you put it?— everyone can see it and I can promise… you know what I mean. I bought it to ask you such a question.”

“I will,” I said. I picked up the watch. It was a beautiful thing, simple and shining and perfect. Nothing like Holmes, who was complex and impossible and essential, although they were both elegant and tightly wound. I looked again at the dates inside the case, and then snapped it closed once more. Holmes took it from me, put it back in its box, and set it aside. Then he pushed me inexorably back into the quilts, onto my scattered clothes, and lay heavily atop me, his shirt buttons catching against mine. I slid my hands up his sides and across his back, gazing up into his serious face. He smelled like too much good brandy.

“You haven’t answered my question.”

“I will wear the ring, yes.”

“Will you forgive me?”

“Will you believe that I haven’t touched the stuff since I was away?”

“Yes.”

“Then, yes.”

“I don’t deserve it,” I said.

“Don’t try and convince me otherwise,” Holmes replied. “It’s much too late for that, Doctor.”

I shut my mouth and he kissed me firmly. Then he tucked his head into the curve of my neck and let himself go boneless. I wrapped my arms around him and held tight. It was nowhere near the romantic celebration I had envisioned. We did still have a dinner reservation, however.

“Holmes.”

“Hm?”

“Will you come out with me tonight?”

“Why?”

“Because you came back, five years ago.”

He lifted his head. “That’s today, is it?”

“Dinner?”

“You have something planned.”

“Nothing particularly special,” I said. “Although I was going to save the ring for dessert.”

The corner of his mouth lifted. He glanced at his hand, admiring the gleam of gold. “That would have been rather reckless of you.”

“Yes, I expect so. But you like that sort of thing.”

He sighed and looked down at me again, “God help me, I do.”

 

We went out to dinner. My new watch sat heavy in my pocket, and its chain glittered in the candlelight. Holmes had regained some of his sobriety by then and declined the wine. I drank sparingly, but we took the bottle home. As we walked, Holmes tucked his hand into the crook of my elbow, and I could feel as he rubbed at the ring with his thumb. We had said little at dinner and said less now. I loved him desperately, and I had doubted him. But he had doubted me, and we were both guilty of misjudgement.

 

It was late when we returned to Baker Street once more, and Holmes only stopped in the sitting room to take off his hat and coat. The room had been aired out in our absence, and the fire in the grate was banked. As soon as I had divested myself of my outer later, he took my hand and pulled me upstairs to my bedroom.

“I need you to show me everything you mean by this,” Holmes said, holding out his hand. “In return, I will give you things to think about when you put that watch in your pocket again.”

“Very well,” said I.

We undressed methodically, and I put the watch carefully on my dressing table. I still couldn’t look at the morocco case it had come in, for so many reasons. Holmes said nothing, and slipped naked between my sheets. When I joined him it was with some hesitation. I didn’t want to treat him like spun glass, but at the same time I felt he deserved it. I had been horrible.

As soon as I was beside him, he rolled me onto my back and resumed his earlier position: between my legs, chest to chest, propped up on his elbows. He sank his fingers into my hair and kissed me softly. I ghosted my hands down his spine and over his backside, which made his thighs part and his hips press into mine. We stayed like that for a long time, trading kisses, breathing softly against one another. I felt like I was trying to apologise again and again, but I also believed that it was being heard and returned. Holmes’s body carried a slight tremor down the length of it, as if he were cold, but we were volcanic under the blankets. His hands carded slowly along my scalp, turning my head back and forth as he kissed me. I touched every inch of him that I could reach, his skin smooth and familiar under my hands.

Eventually I felt his trembling subside, and some of the tension went out of his spine. He relaxed, his shoulder dipping, pressing his chest and belly more firmly against mine. I felt his cock begin to fill; mine responded. His kisses grew more demanding and his breathing deepened. I felt the prickle of sweat under my arms. I drew up my heels, giving him space beneath the quilts, and he pulled first one knee and then the other underneath himself. His prick rubbed against mine and his sharp exhale made my heart leap.

I gripped his hips, rocking up against him, and he gasped again. His eyes were closed. I kissed his lower lip, then his cheek, the corner of his jaw. He turned his head to allow my progress. I worried the tender skin of his throat with my lips and teeth; found the place that made him shudder.

He shifted his weight atop me and moved his hand from my hair to my chest, fingers finding my left nipple unerringly. He rubbed it with his thumb, sending little ripples of pleasure through me, until it had stiffened to a peak and my cock lay heavy and throbbing against my belly. His neck was arched, welcoming my mouth, and I sucked hard at the juncture of his neck and shoulder, doing my best to leave a mark.

“Ah,” he hissed when the suction reached the point of pain, and I let go. My lips tingled. The light was too low to see if I had succeeded. He lifted his hand to rub at the spot, glaring at me. “Now,  _ that _ was reckless,” he said.

“Hardly.” I stroked his flanks. “No one will see it but me.”

He raised an eyebrow, skeptical, and then bent to return the favor. I allowed it, relishing the feel of his teeth at my throat, and when I winced he pulled away. He wrinkled his nose.

“There,” said he. “Fair’s fair.”

“So it is.”

We grinned at one another, hesitantly pleased, and then he bent to kiss me once more. His hips rocked, sliding his prick against mine, and I gasped into his mouth. My hands tightened on his back, holding him to me. He broke the kiss to bite my lower lip and then pulled away from me, shifting down my body. He planted kisses along my chest, sucked briefly at my right nipple, and rubbed his nose in the hair around it. His belly brushed teasingly against the head of my prick. He reached a soft place above my hip and pressed his face to it. A moment later, I was squirming under the hard suction of his mouth. He was leaving another mark on me, halfway between my hip and my ribs. My hand found its way to his hair and I groaned, pushing him away.

He sat back, panting, satisfied. “That’s for your watch,” said he.

“By Jove,” I muttered. “Come back.”

“I was going—”

“I know what you were going to do,” I said, pulling on his arms, “but I want you up here.”

“Hm,” he said, and settled into my embrace again. I kissed him, enjoying his murmur of pleasure, and slipped a hand into the space between us.

His prick jumped at my touch, its head already slick. He moaned again, tilting his hips, and I curled my hand around him. It was impossible not to touch myself at the same time, but my focus was on his shuddering breath and the throb of blood in my palm. I stroked him slowly, allowing his excitement to ease my grip, and soon he was thrusting into the circle of my hand.

“I love you,” I said.

He gazed down at me, his lower lip caught between his teeth. “By Jove, I love you too,” he said, touching his forehead to mine. His eyelashes fluttered. “Oh, John.”

My arousal surged and would no longer be denied. I let go of his cock and rocked my hips up against his. He took the hint and spread his knees, lowering his body to rest against full-length against mine. Our pricks were trapped between us, slick and hot and stiff.

“Oh, I wanted you inside me, but I can’t bear to move away now,” Holmes said.

“Anything you want,” I gasped, as he worked his hips in slow, rolling thrusts. “Absolutely anything— whatever you—”

“Just this,” he said.

“A little faster,” I suggested.

Holmes laughed and obliged me, and we were silent for a little while, save our ragged breathing. Finally he groaned in frustration and came to a reluctant halt.

“Get the Vaseline, John,” he ordered.

I reached for it, stowed in the bedside table, and we both took a few fingers worth. He shifted again, making room for our hands, and we took one another in a firm, slippery grip. With my other hand, I cradled his head to kiss him. 

It was sloppy and inelegant, and didn’t last very long. I cherished the way his body shuddered and jolted against mine, the hot pulse of his ejaculate across my belly, and the depth of his moan at his crisis. His mouth was open against mine, hardly kissing me anymore at all, and the way he trembled and arched made my own desire crest and spill out between us.

We breathed together for a long time, hands trapped, sticky with sweat and worse. When Holmes finally eased himself away, it was with a moan of disgust.

“Oh, we shouldn’t have done that,” he said, rolling to one side. 

He had left me the exit from the bed, so I got up on shaking legs and went to the basin. The water was colder than the air.

“No-oo,” Holmes moaned, when I returned with the cloth. “I regret everything. Stop. Take that away. I’d rather wake up—”

“I doubt  _ that _ very much,” I said, and wiped him clean, despite his squirming. Then, taking a breath to fortify myself, I gave myself the same treatment as quickly as I could.

When I climbed back into bed, Holmes pulled me to him at once, shivering dramatically. I arranged the quilts around us, and when we were securely cocooned he ceased his complaining. Instead, he brought his left hand up to look at his ring in the moonlight.

“It’s perfect,” he said softly. “Thank you.”

“I should have given it to you years ago,” I said.

“Oh, John.”

“I mean that.”

“Ring or no,” he said, “I have always considered us to have a sort of an understanding.”

“Be that as it may,” said I, “talking about it might have saved us a bit of trouble.”

He considered this. “Perhaps you’re right. John, I’m not… any good..”

“I know. Nor am I.”

“But I do love you.”

“And I you.”

“And I’m not… looking for distractions anymore.”

“Nor I,” I agreed, pressing my forehead against his. “You are… you are everything.”

His inhale was shaky. “And you, my dear Doctor, are the only thing.”


End file.
